Marketing Tips

Give Back - One of the most effective business strategies is to offer value to your target audience. Not only does this establish trust but it will also translate into more leads and sales in the long run. Use your social media promotions to offer discounts or special offers that are only available to your Facebook fans or Twitter followers for example.

Vladimir Khaykin — Webmasterstudio

One of the most effective business strategies is to offer value to your target audience. Not only does this establish trust but it will also translate into more leads and sales in the long run. Use your social media promotions to offer discounts or special offers that are only available to your Facebook fans or Twitter followers.

Vladimir Khaykin — Webmasterstudio

Never use the name of your business as the headline.

We see hundreds, even thousands of small business ads, flyers, brochures, post cards, etc... with the name of the business as the headline, and we just shake our heads. So much time and money wasted.

Marketing is about 'helping people get what they want.'

If you don't let your prospects know what you have for them up front -- they're gone.

Telling them the name of your business is not what they want.

Joe Garcia — Owner — Give To Get Marketing

You need to learn how to "set up" and "position" your company with the "best" social networks and websites. Some initial positioning details to consider: (a) determining which are the "best social sites" for your niche and interests, (d) choosing the right user name for your individual profile links, (c) choosing the most attractive profile information and media to share, (d) developing a knack for filtering activity according to what is appropriate at a particular social site, (e) establishing a time schedule that permits working as many networks as possible, (f) choosing the best initial connections ... and so on.

Lea Carlton — Consultant — pghseolady.com

Create Measurable Social Media Goals. Rather than developing general goals such as "generate exposure for my business" or "increase website traffic and subscribers", get specific. Develop goals that are measurable and tie them to actual metrics such as "achieve 100 mentions of my brand on Twitter and blogs by the third month of the program" or "increase traffic to my site from social media sites to 1,000 visits per month.

— Marketing Article Library

Journalists have long complained about jargon and hyperbolic language in press releases. In addition to doing yourself no favors in the newsroom, jargon-laden headlines and press releases don't resonate with searchers, either. Use the plain, accurate and descriptive language people use when discussing the product/service/initiative you're promoting. You'll be more likely to connect with your audiences - via search engines, and on-page.

Sarah Skerik — PR Newswire

Make search ranking improvement an ongoing focus. Leaving your search engine ranking to chance is not a good strategy. You must focus on SEO if you are going to make progress and ultimately dominate search ranking for your website. Follow your plan and work that plan until you are in the number one position. Once you've achieved your desired outcome, put a maintenance plan into place so that you hold and retain that position over the long term.

Michael Fleischner — President — Marketing Scoop

The length of the press release is a make or break factor in the overall strength of its optimization. You can craft the perfect headline and use the best keywords, but if your message is too long it can become diluted, which means that search engines can't index it as specifically. The optimum length is generally 400 to 600 words - between about a page and a half and two pages. This length is easy for readers to digest and comprehend, but it's long enough to include the rich detail readers appreciate - which is also informative to search engines.

Sarah Skerik — PR Newswire

Blogger is a great tool for setting up your own blog which can be used to publish information about yourself. Popular blog sites are often picked up by Google and you can control the content. Be sure to sign up for Technorati after your blog has been published.

Michael Fleischner — President — Marketing Scoop

By making your Facebook page a source for exclusive information/deals you incentivize people to gather around you. Don't be afraid to be creative in offering something of value. By knowing who and where your consumers are and what they value, you generate reasons for users to join your page.

Jasmine Sandler — Founder and President — Agent-cy

Your prospects and customers don't care about your company, and your successes, they only care about themselves. They want to know 'What's in It For Me?' and they want to know that immediately -- or they will stop reading.

This is a hard lesson for business people to learn, because they are so enamored with their products and services, that they erroneously believe that their prospects/customers will be too. Not true.

Joe Gracia — Give to Get Marketing

Whether you're new to SEO or consider yourself a search engine optimization expert, leveraging your pay-per-click advertising is the best investment you can make. Determine which keywords generate the type of traffic that is most valuable to you and optimize around these terms. They will generate more traffic and revenue at a lower cost.

Michael Fleischner — President — Marketing Scoop

If your current clients are willing to take a survey, you should certainly use their feedback to help shape your future online marketing direction. Asking your clients questions about what they want from your site, how easy is it to get around on your site, what they think you should improve on, what features they would like added and so on will give you effective marketing insight with which to craft your targeted messages.

Jasmine Sandler — Founder and President — Agent-cy

Know your audience. Successful campaigns get that way because marketers know their audience. They fully understand their needs, how to help meet those needs and how to create demand. Knowing and understanding your audience through proper market segmentation means a well targeted campaign that generates a profitable return.

Michael Fleischner — President — Marketing Scoop

Don't get caught up in reading the Google Toolbar's indicator of Page Rank. Many ecommerce experts have done research on this tool to know that it doesn't update often and some have even narrowed it to a quarterly update. Spend more time building quality, relevant inbound links to your site; this is what will help you score big with your page rank.